Chương 284: Book Six, Chapter 46: Daphne Part III

The woman known as Homibride, and occasionally referred to as Daphne Sinclair, stood on a wooden walkway in a seldom-visited section of the seventh floor. It was under construction. She had read about it in the manager's office. There were always a handful of locations for a good interrogation here at the Carousel Casino.

In front of her, the cook, whose name was supposed to be Chef Champlain, was strung up by the feet, her hands bound, her head bouncing gently off the floor, swinging from a banister of a beautiful balcony above. There were skylights in this room. It was technically a sort of high-ceilinged living room, but Daphne liked to imagine it for what it could be. With its wide open floor plan and beautiful wooden floors, it could have been a ballroom.

The ballroom danced in gloom and gray, lit only by the wick of her lighter and the steely blue of the storm, but Daphne saw only radiance and possibilities. That was always what Daphne saw. She pushed on Chef Champlain, and the woman swung back, her screams muffled by a piece of cloth stuffed in her mouth. She was waiting. She did her best work On-Screen. Off-Screen people broke character too much. She didn't like that.

As she waited, pushing the cook back and forth like a child on a swing set, she thought about Riley, her husband. He needed her now more than ever. Things had really gone amok. Was he doubting their love? She could hardly think the thought. Was it too late to give him one perfect moment, one happy day? It felt too late. But if she couldn't give Riley the happiness he deserved, then what was all of this for? Well, her parents, of course. She had missed them so much.

Time was a four-letter word in Carousel, a topic too rude to discuss, but she felt it had been a very long time since she had seen them. She still remembered the moment she came home to them the first time. They were so happy to have their daughter back. And the look on their face when they got to see her on her wedding day! They deserved that a million times over. They were such good people. She wondered how many times they had seen their daughter's wedding now.

She thought back to the first time, and tears rolled down her face. It wasn't every day that you could raise the dead, but for Beth and Robert Hutchins, she had done it. Their long-lost daughter was getting married. It was the best and happiest day they could ever imagine, the pinnacle of their lives, and now they would never be disappointed. It would never be stolen from them. Not that the blackmailers hadn't tried. Threatening to expose her. She wanted to give the cook an earful.

So she grabbed her letter opener, a wedding gift from years back—silver with a pearl handle. But she couldn't give it to the cook just yet. She had to perform. She smiled, reveling in what she had done for her adoptive parents (well, she had adopted them), wondering if there was any chance she might be able to pull it all off again. Riley could be so frustrating sometimes. She just wanted him to look her in the eye and tell her he loved her so that she could truly know she had done her life's purpose.

But it was like he didn't even care about the wedding. It was just part of the plot for him. After she had given him all of her love and, more importantly, the love of the man he was portraying in the storyline, Riley swore he could feel that love, right in his chest. But Daphne wondered if that was true. Most of her grooms in this storyline were overwhelmed by love. Riley was suspicious of it. What was she going to do about him? The question plagued her.

She couldn't bear the thought of denying him true love and happiness. Finally, after too much fretting, she was On-Screen. As the cook swung back toward her, she walked over to the column where the rope was tied off and cinched it up a bit so that she could get a better look at the cook. She tied it back quickly and efficiently.

"A woman needs to know her knots," she said with a smile. But she wasn't smiling at the cook. She was smiling at all of her adoring fans, wherever they were. They loved her. They watched her with rapt attention. She walked over to Chef Champlain.

"Ooh, what a fun thing to say. Chef Champlain. Chef Champlain. Rolls off the tongue," she said.

"That is your name, right? That is what you filled in on your employment application." The cook didn't answer. She stared wide-eyed at Daphne, struggling to breathe because of the sweat and snot that clogged up her nostrils. Her tears fell like rain onto the floor, leaving little droplets in the dust, making mud, Daphne observed. She couldn't think of a more apt metaphor for what these blackmailers were doing. Making mud.

She rushed toward the cook and started patting her down, looking for hidden pockets, concealed caches of money, or weapons. And she found one, sewn into the back of an apron that flopped up over the cook's torso lazily, as if inviting her to reach into its pocket and pilfer its contents. She reached her hand in, careful not to get nicked by any blade or needle. But she didn't find any blade. She found something else.

"What is this?" Daphne said as she pulled a small, cylindrical bottle out of the woman's pocket. She tapped her fingernail against the glass object, being careful not to tamper with the stopper at the top. The label had numerous scientific terms on it, but those did not concern Daphne. The only ink on that label that mattered was the giant skull and crossbones, black against red. Carousel was so simple.

"Poison!" she exclaimed.

"Why in the world would you need to carry around poison?"

"Please," the woman said.

"I didn't know what it was. I thought it was my medicine. Let me have a look at it." She had difficulty speaking as Daphne spun her gently while she stared at the poison. But not just any poison, she thought. This poison had a trope on it. How strange. She had been finding these trope items all over the place. Of course, they were probably made for the players, but finders keepers. Now, what did this one do?

She relaxed her eyes and stared at the red wallpaper, pretending to read the contents of the label so the audience would think her clever. The trope was called Infection by Implication, and it simply allowed the user to infect, hex, or poison a target by providing the audience with a visual cue that they had already done so. Now, she pondered, how might that be used? The realization came to her suddenly.

All the cook would need to do was serve food, pick her target, and then simply show the audience a clip of her sticking the stopper back into the top of the vial. Abracadabra. Her target would be poisoned. How nifty!

"But what does a blackmailer need poison for?" Daphne asked aloud in her most thoughtful tone. She continued digging through the cook's pocket.

"Oh, I see," Daphne said as she grabbed a very similar vial with a very similar stopper. This vial did not contain poison. It contained a white milky substance.

"The antidote?" she asked aloud. With a quick snatch, she grabbed onto the cook's arm and stopped her from spinning. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Poison and an antidote. Why, I wonder, is your scheme poisoning someone and then promising them the cure for money?"

"Please, I just want to go home. I have children and I—" the cook started to say, but Daphne bent down and grabbed her cheeks, squeezing them inward until the cook couldn't move her jaw.

"There's no need to lie to me. Call it professional courtesy. How well does this scam of yours work?" she asked. The cook, sensing perhaps that she might be able to make a friend of this crazed bride, spat out, "It's marvelously successful. No one wants to die, not the way that poison kills you." Daphne stared back at the label.

"No, they wouldn't," she said.

"Very clever. I have no doubt it is a successful trick. The question for me is, who did you poison?" The cook seemed to consider whether to be defiant or pliant. She chose the latter.

"No one," the cook said.

"I had a plan, but the storm ruined everything." Daphne chuckled.

"Tell me about it, sister," she said.

"Everything that can go wrong has been." She mimed as if she were about to unstick the stopper of the poison. Her mind delighted at how she might use its wonderful little trope. Could she simply show herself struggling with the cook and let the audience infer that she had poisoned her? Would that be sufficient? The possibilities were endless, and she revelled in the idea of thinking up all kinds of little plots. But now she needed answers.

"How much do you know about me?" she asked.

"Nothing," the cook said.

"No, don't lie. That won't help you. Professional courtesy, remember? I received a nasty little letter from someone. It threatened to expose my identity to my dear husband and parents," Daphne asked, her voice spun like a spider's silk.

"What did that mean exactly?" The cook looked at her, lips quivering, face red from being hung upside down, and said, "That isn't my trade. I'm not a part of it."

"Of course not," Daphne said.

"You were only going to poison some rich victim and coerce them into paying for the cure. But you do know the person who sent me that terrible little letter, don't you?"

"Yes," the cook said.

"I do. But they didn't tell me details. They just said that they knew you weren't really the missing girl, but they didn't say how they knew that."

"And that's all they knew?" Daphne asked.

"They know who I'm not, but do they know who I am?"

"No!" the cook exclaimed as she started spinning around again.

"They don't know anything. They just thought you were marrying that rich poker player and trying to find a better life. And maybe we could all have a better life if we scared you."

"If you scared me," Daphne repeated.

"Yes, that could work. I run to my fiancé and I tell him everything. Tell him that I truly love him and that I was just escaping bad circumstances, and now the crows have come home to roost. Riley would save me, certainly. He loves me so. Enough tears, and he would surely forgive me for my little deception. I am offering him the greatest happiness a man can know, after all. But would he tell my parents?"

"I don't know," the cook said.

"Hush, I wasn't talking to you," Daphne scolded as she looked into the camera and smiled.

"Your terrible friends and your terrible letter and terrible taste… Beth and Robert lost their daughter. For years, they searched for her. They gave up their fortunes and their careers trying to find their little girl. And when they finally had her back, they rejoiced. You and your friends would take that from them. You would take their daughter away again. This was their happiest day, and you almost ruined it." The cook could hardly breathe as she stared at Daphne.

Her face had concealed her rage, but her voice had not.

"I'm sorry, but it wasn't me," the cook said.

"Honest."

"So who was it?" Daphne asked.

"Was it the photographer?"

"No," the cook said.

"He's not one of us."

"Oops," Daphne said, looking back to the camera.

"Well, he did overcharge us. Still."

"I don't know their real names. We're part of a network. I haven't even met them. I only know their code names. Silver Fox and Miss Kitty. We communicate over radio. I swear, we didn't mean for your parents to find out about you. We just thought you'd pay the money and we'd slip away. We would have left anyway after the fiasco with the fitness instructor if it weren't for this damn storm. Why did he stick around? He was supposed to leave it in the basement and go." Their killing of Antoine had been a real pain.

It shortened the Party Phase something awful and made everyone suspicious. Daphne liked a long Party Phase and a controlled reveal of the chaos. Between the storm and the blackmailers, everything was going wrong.

"Somehow, I doubt that you would have left that easily," Daphne said.

"If it wasn't for this storm, you'd be working your little poison plan… Did I mention that I found my parents dead this evening? The doctor thinks they were poisoned."

"Oh no," the cook said.

"It wasn't me. It wasn't me. They weren't my target."

"Oh, they weren't?" Daphne asked, lifting the letter opener with the mother-of-pearl handle up to the cook's neck.

"No," the cook said.

"They didn't have any money. There was no point. Maybe the son-in-law would step in, but poisoning old folks is unreliable." Daphne pulled the knife back. She dropped her threatening manner at once.

"Because the poison might have interactions with medications that they're taking and their compromised health?" Daphne asked clinically.

"They may die before they can pay up?"

"Yes," the cook said.

"It's better to poison healthy people. More predictable."

"I've never thought about that," Daphne said.

"Normally, when I poison someone, I don't intend for them to get better. But it makes sense that you'd have to take something like that into account." She played it as if she were talking shop with a fellow professional. Carousel responded in kind. She could practically see the cook receive her new marching orders. A little humor goes a long way in a storyline like this. Helps the audience forget about the messy blood.

"That, plus some old folks romanticize the idea of dying in a way that doesn't burden their loved ones. So poisoning them and telling them that their family will have to pay up if they want to survive feeds into that fantasy. They'll let themselves die so they can go out as martyrs," the cook said.

"I… I know it sounds absurd, but it's true."

"I would believe it," Daphne said.

"When you poison the elderly, nine times out of ten, they don't report the symptoms. Not until it's far too late."

"Very sad," the cook said.

"Yes," Daphne agreed. On that note, Daphne got serious again.

"So if you weren't going to poison my parents, who was your target?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, surely you do. A professional like you, you probably had three or four targets picked out, just in case you needed a backup plan."

"I was called out here last minute, and I didn't think it through."

"You must have. You've been working here for weeks. Preparing. Putting out your feelers. I stole the schedule from the manager's office."

"I was going to poison the fitness instructor," the cook said, "but Ed beat me to it. Beat him to a pulp because Bambi couldn't seduce him." When did the receptionist try to seduce Antoine? He would never cheat on Kimberly like that. That's part of the reason Daphne hadn't picked him. That, and Riley needed her so much more.

"No, you weren't going to poison the fitness instructor. You had dirt on him; there was no need," Daphne said.

"Poison would only increase the risk of failure." Daphne pondered over how bad of taste these villains had—killing Antoine for First Blood. That was going to devastate him. He worked so hard to support his team. Getting killed first would make him feel like he had failed. He put so much pressure on himself, even more than Riley. She would have to clear this storyline and kill all of these players. That way, Antoine would never be revived to realize his failure. She would do it for Antoine.

And she would do it for Riley, who needed a happy ending more than most. Speaking of Riley.

"Tell me," she asked, "were you going to poison the groom?" The dull light of her wick lighter was enough to read the cook's face.

"You were, weren't you? He is the best target," she said.

"I'll give you that... money, generosity, selflessness, a keen survival instinct. We probably wouldn't have even made it to the wedding if you had done that."

"No," the cook said.

"I wasn't going to poison him. I thought better of it."

"No, you didn't," Daphne said.

"And if the poison had taken hold, the wedding would have been ruined. Beth and Robert Hutchins would never get to see their daughter married, would never have that perfect happy day, and Riley would never know happiness either. You would have ruined it all."

"No," the cook said.

"I had already reconsidered. I was just working the job. They pay well here at the casino."

"That was your worst lie yet," Daphne said.

"But don't worry. I'm not going to kill you because of that."

"Oh, thank God," the cook said.

"I was going to kill you no matter what," Daphne continued.

"Oh, no," the cook said. The pressure of being hung upside down was getting to her. She felt like she was going to pass out.

"Please don't do this. Professional courtesy, remember?"

"No. Only I get that," Daphne said. She grabbed hold of the cook's body and swung her toward the wall where a laundry chute was jammed open. Daphne rested the cook's body on the open swinging door of the chute. Her victim wiggled and wriggled, but she was tied tight.

"Please don't do this," the cook said. But before she could finish, Daphne shoved a strip of cloth from the bottom of her dress back into the cook's mouth, buffeting her.

"I have money!" the cook screamed through the gag. But Daphne didn't show that she had heard or cared. She already pocketed the cook's wad of cash.

"Things have gone terribly wrong," she said aloud. She truly regretted bringing the storm into this storyline. It had messed up so many of her plans. However, it had also disrupted the plans of the blackmailers. If it weren't for the storm, Riley would be sick and dying right now from poison, she realized. This was fate. Carousel protected Riley because of their love.

"My husband thinks I've gone mad," she said.

"All this running around, sneaking." She walked over to the column where the rope had been tied off. She had an extra ten feet or so of slack once she untied it, and the banister she had thrown it over was holding firm. She started to let out the slack, and the cook slowly lowered into the laundry chute, screaming and struggling the whole time.

"It's a pity that the basement is flooded," Daphne said.

"Drowning in the dark is a terrible way to send someone off." Riley was on to her. Kimberly more so. But they hadn't even reached Second Blood yet. They would soon. Maybe she could find Riley, tell him part of the truth, and get him to accept her. There was no reason he needed to know about her sordid past. She could simply tell him that it was her character who had stolen Rachel Hutchins' identity and was being blackmailed for it. Yes. It could be so easy to forget.

She was just a player portraying a character, and so was Riley. And he needed her. He needed happiness in a way that most of her husbands never did. He was a man afraid to love, and she had cured him. And if she could give him one perfect kiss, one perfect moment, she could make it last forever. She had a lot of work to do.

"I need to go save my marriage," she said as she dropped the rope, and it skidded over the banister, leaving the cook to tumble down the laundry chute toward the watery grave below.